Gianni Grippo: Most Open Mat BJJ Rounds Are a Waste of Time
Gianni Grippo has been rolling competitively for a quarter century, and he just said the quiet part out loud: a lot of the open mat time BJJ practitioners treat as sacred is, in his words, often a…
Gianni Grippo has been rolling competitively for a quarter century, and he just said the quiet part out loud: a lot of the open mat time BJJ practitioners treat as sacred is, in his words, often a waste of time. It's the kind of statement that stings a little, because most of us have built our entire training identity around showing up for open mat and getting as many rounds in as humanly possible.
What Grippo actually said
Speaking on a recent episode of the Jits and Giggles podcast, Watch the episode on YouTube, Grippo was careful to draw a distinction. The problem isn't open mat as a format — it's how almost everyone approaches it. As reported by BJJEE, Grippo explained that unless you actively take matters into your own hands, communicate what you're working on before the round starts, or set up specific situational sparring, hours of open rolling often end up not being especially productive.
That's a notable thing for Grippo to say, given who's saying it. This isn't a hobbyist grumbling about a bad training day. Grippo is one of the more decorated and cerebral competitors of the last decade, a black belt under Marcelo Garcia with a résumé that includes ADCC medals and years spent living inside the top levels of the sport. When someone with that much mat time says the default version of open mat isn't working, it's worth actually sitting with the claim instead of brushing it off.
The fix isn't skipping open mat — it's showing up with a plan
Grippo's proposed solution is refreshingly simple: go in with a target. He said he tries to always identify something specific to work on before he ever steps onto the mat, rather than just racking up rounds for the sake of it. He also admitted to going through phases where he lost that discipline — doing the reps, putting in the work, but without his mind fully engaged or a clear goal in mind for the session. His conclusion was blunt: that's not how you get better faster.
This lines up with something coaches have been saying about deliberate practice for years, just rarely from inside the competitive BJJ world with this level of bluntness. There's a real difference between training volume and training quality, and jiu jitsu culture has historically leaned hard toward celebrating volume. Longer classes, more open mat, more rounds, more mat time logged — the assumption has always been that more equals better. Grippo's point cuts against that assumption without dismissing hard work itself. He's not saying train less. He's saying train on purpose.
Why this matters for the rest of us
Most people reading this aren't ADCC medalists, and that's exactly why the advice matters more, not less. A world-class competitor like Grippo can probably extract value out of an unstructured round through sheer instinct and experience — decades of jiu jitsu have wired his brain to recognize patterns and opportunities even when he's not consciously hunting for them. The average hobbyist or intermediate competitor doesn't have that luxury. Rolling without a focus, at that stage, often just means reinforcing the same three escapes and the same guard pass you already know, while the actual gaps in your game go untouched round after round.
Setting a goal before a round costs nothing and takes ten seconds. Tell your partner you're only working from bottom half guard tonight. Tell them you're not passing until you've tried a specific pressure pass three times, even if it fails. Ask for a specific position instead of a free-for-all. None of this requires a coach standing over you with a stopwatch — it just requires deciding, before you shake hands, what the round is actually for.
There's also a broader lesson buried in Grippo's comments about self-awareness in training. He didn't just diagnose a problem with open mats generally — he owned that he's personally cycled through stretches of unfocused training himself. That kind of honesty from a competitor at his level is a useful reminder that even the best in the sport have to actively fight the pull toward mindless repetition. Jiu jitsu rewards intention as much as it rewards hours, and the practitioners who improve fastest tend to be the ones treating every round, gi or no-gi, as a chance to test something specific rather than just survive it.
Next time you walk onto the mat for open rounds, it might be worth asking yourself the same question Grippo is clearly asking himself: what am I actually here to work on tonight?
See you on the mats.
Original report via BJJEE.